Miss Amy got a light in her eyes and it didn’t bode well for the Patsy brat.“First we need to find her, then we’ll reel her in.”
“How do we do that?”Mad Dog asked.
Miss Amy smiled at him.“Remember I dealt with the greediest of the greedy in this world and that was Amos.We let her own greed set her up for failure.”
Chapter Five
Sophie shook her head.“I’ve heard of this supposed treasure all my life but I never heard how it got here in the first place.And how it's tied to our family.”
Smokey snorted, then he sat forward in his chair, telling her the story of the old pirate and the family, “Shortly after we first came here, we found out the land here was taken over by pirates for a time.You know, like buccaneer stuff.”He shrugged, then said, “But sweet Jesus, we came here thirty years ago, me and four other guys.When we settled here, we dismissed all the rumors as just that...rumors.I figured that even though there could have been pirates docking at the coast here, our land isn’t necessarily where they were or where they kept treasure either.”
Samson chuckled.“Yeah, then we found some old pictures on the net showing us that this place had an old house and outbuildings.It was called The Nest.”
Asa nodded.“Yeah, what a fucking silly name.We kept most of that and built our clubhouse here.Then every so often those rumors would circulate again and some people actually came here looking for some long-lost Russian treasure that they figured they could cash in on.”
Sophie looked around the room.“But who kept those rumors alive for so long?”
Asa snorted.“There’s only one man that remembered them and that would be our town’s historian, Amos Litchner.He thought he knew everything there was to know about Boondock Creek.Hell, he probably even remembered how this little hole in the wall got its name.”
Sophie looked over at Miss Amy and whispered, “Your Amos?”
Miss Amy looked disgusted and nodded her head.“Yes,thatAmos.He came here looking for the treasure but he never found it.He would go on what he said were round-about walks every so often.But these trips were his way of searching the entire mountain, looking for the damn gold.”
Asa glanced at Mad Dog then back to Miss Amy.“He even took Miss Amy’s last name Litchner, so he could claim the gold if he ever found it.We came to learn only recently that he also used her name to hide out from people coming after him for his other business.The one where he conned people.His real name is Amos Blackwell and he’s wanted in several other states for playing his games with the courts.”
Smokey cleared his throat and said, “You might not know it but the family’s real last name of Litchnerkoff.But that’s the name old Oleg was born under, he changed it to Litchner when he tried to set this place up.People were still looking for the old pirate and he couldn’t exactly tell him who he was, could he?He would have to answer for the deaths aboard his ship and he skipped out on that part when he came here.That old man docked in South Carolina about a hundred fifty years ago and then disappeared with the treasure he was bringing over from the homeland near Mosco, Russia.He was bringing over a high society family named Mrishnakov, some shirttail relation to the Tzar Nickolas.The only thing is once the boat left Russia, the Mrishnakov family never made it to the New World’s shores.There were rumors that the family was murdered on the high seas, but there were also rumors they fell ill with fever and they all died on the Litchnerkoff ship.Oleg Litchnerkoff knew he couldn’t answer for what happened, so he left his ship in the dock at South Carolina.Then he took a smaller boat and disappeared into the mountains.No one ever found the treasure or him.”
Sophie frowned and asked, “And how do you know all that?”
Smokey smiled.“There’s a lot to those rumors and there are people in this town that still look for that Russian treasure.It had been what led the Hell’s Sinners here again.We did find out that’s what brought them here in the first place, twenty something years ago.”He shook his head, “We found out later that after all this time, Amos was the one that started those rumors time and time again, hoping to spark someone into looking for the treasure.Then of course, he was going to swoop in and claim it after the fact.”
“He was responsible for the deaths of my men when the Hell’s Sinners MC attacked us that first time.”Asa growled.“Then he set us again twenty years later.And he didn’t get what he wanted either time.”
Smokey sighed and shook his head.“He caused the deaths of more than just our men.Like Cheyenne’s mother.They believed she knew where that treasure was and they killed her because she wouldn’t tell them anything.To those looking for it, it is very real and just the hint of gold is something that fires their blood with the hope of real wealth unlike anything they have ever known before.I read up on this bit of history years back before the internet was such a big deal.The Mrishnakov family was very real and as second cousins to the Tzar of old Russia they would have been very wealthy.Then having to start over in the New World, they would have brought their jewels, gold and any kind of luxury items they had with them.”He crossed his arms over his chest.“And that’s what brought Amos Blackwell to our little part of the world and he’d been setting up any kind of trap to find that gold all these years.”
Miss Amy nodded.“So now you know that the gold doesn’t really belong to the family.We can’t lay claim to something that doesn’t belong to us.”
